The present invention relates generally to data analytics, and more particularly to data collection, data processing, and negotiation for data in view of analytics based on ontological policies.
Ontology is a model for describing a world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationships. Ontologies can represent entities, ideas, and events, along with their properties and relationships, according to a system of categories.
Domain ontology (i.e., domain-specific ontology) represents concepts that belong to part of the world. Particular meanings of terms applied to a domain are provided by domain ontology. For example, the word “card” has many different meanings. Ontology about the domain of poker may model the “playing card” meaning of the word “card”, whereas ontology about the domain of computer hardware may model the “video card” meaning of the word “card”.
Since domain ontologies represent concepts in a very specific and often eclectic way, they are often incompatible. As systems that rely on domain ontologies expand, they often need to merge domain ontologies into a more general representation. This presents a challenge to the ontology designer. Different ontologies in the same domain arise due to different languages, different intended usage of the ontologies, and different perceptions of the domain (based on cultural background, education, ideology, etc.).